


Someday My Prince Will Come

by imaginary_golux



Series: Fractured Fairy Tales [7]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, brief mention of animal harm, fairy-tale typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7529758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Poe Dameron does not have skin as white as snow, Kylo Ren is very jealous anyhow, and there are positively no dwarves.</p>
<p>There is an apple, though.</p>
<p>Beta by my Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someday My Prince Will Come

Once upon a time, long ago in a land far from here, there was a young woman - a young wife, much in love - sewing in her windowseat; and it came to pass that she pricked her finger, and the blood fell on the frame of the window, and she said to herself, “I would that the child I carry should have lips as red as blood, and hair as dark as polished wood, and skin as golden as the summer sunshine.” And when she came to childbed, her son was born as beautiful as a summer dawn, and a happier child never was seen, for he laughed before he cried and smiled before he ever frowned, and was the delight of his parents and all his family; and she named him Poe.

Now the woman was a famous trainer of hunting hounds - those sleek and beautiful creatures which are so beloved of the nobility - and she raised her son to know her craft. So it was that young Poe grew strong and lithe and agile as a young deer, from running all day with the hounds, and he knew the forest which bordered the kingdom as well as any man might, for that he spent his days within its shelter; and all who knew him said he was the loveliest young man they had ever beheld.

Now that kingdom had been a happy kingdom when Poe was born, but when he was very young there came a great tragedy, for the good queen and her consort were slain - or so it appeared, though their bodies were never found - and the head of their council, a man named Snoke, became regent for their young son, Ben. This Snoke was a cold and cruel man, and he taught Ben to be the same, until the gentle child that Ben had been was lost in the cruel young man Kylo Ren, as he now called himself. And Snoke taught the boy Kylo Ren that he must always strive to be the most excellent at whatever he did - and that becoming excellent might be as much about removing the competition as developing his own skills. And so Kylo Ren learned magic, and grew very skilled in it; and also he grew very proud of his beauty, and could not bear the thought that any might be more beautiful than he, for he wished the many nobles and princes and princesses who he scorned to never find another so beautiful as himself, and so be envious all their days.

So it was that Kylo Ren would go each morning to a certain enchanted mirror, and breathe upon it, and say, “Mirror, mirror, tell me true: who more lovely do you view?”

And each morning the mirror would reply, “O prince, no one more lovely lies beneath your kingdom’s open skies.” And Kylo Ren was content.

But one day, when Poe Dameron had come to the full flower of his beauty, the mirror said, “O prince, you are lovely and cruel and fell, but the Dameron heir is lovely as well.” And Kylo Ren became wroth beyond words that any in his kingdom should dare to be as lovely as he, and he summoned his soldiers to him, and bade them find the Dameron heir and slay him, and bring his heart to Kylo Ren in proof.

So the soldiers went out to find Poe and slay him; but one of them, kinder than the others, said to himself, “It is not right that we should kill an innocent man only because the prince is jealous of him; I must stop this, if I can.” And he hastened ahead of his comrades, and came to the place where Poe was hunting with his hound, and found that Poe had just slain a deer, and was preparing to bear it home for his family.

“You must flee,” the soldier told him, “for my comrades come at the prince’s orders to slay you; while you are within the kingdom’s borders you will never be safe. Take your dog and run, and I will take the heart of this deer and say that it is yours, and perhaps I will fool the prince and give you time to escape forever.”

“My friend, I thank you,” said Poe, and gave the soldier the heart of the deer, and kissed his cheek, and fled deep into the forest with his faithful hound.

The soldier took the heart and went to his comrades, and told them he had found Poe alone and helpless in the woods, and slain him, and brought the heart as proof; and they carried it back to the castle and gave it to the prince, who placed it in a golden casket beside his mirror and gloated over it.

And the next morning, when the prince asked his mirror who the loveliest person in the kingdom was, the mirror replied, “O prince, no one more lovely lies beneath your kingdom’s open skies.” So Kylo Ren was content.

Now Poe had fled deep into the forest, deeper than he had ever gone before, until finally he was well and truly lost; and as night drew close he saw a light, and followed it, and found that it was a cottage built into the side of a hill, with a garden beside it, and so in hope and desperation he knocked upon its door. It was answered by a young woman who bore a quarterstaff in her hand, and looked on him with deep suspicion; but the his hound came to sit beside him and look longingly up at her with its wide and hopeful eyes, and she laughed and said, “Come in, huntsman, you and your hound; so long as you mean me no harm, I offer you hearthspace for the night.”

“I thank you,” Poe said. “I am fleeing from the wicked prince, Kylo Ren, who has sent his soldiers to take my heart - and it is only by the kindness of one of those same soldiers that I live even now - and I would not bring trouble to your house, but for a night’s shelter I thank you.”

“There are such wards upon this house that Kylo Ren and his master cannot find it,” the woman said, “and if you are their enemy you are my friend. If you will tend my cottage while I work in the mine, then you may have hearthspace for so long as you please. My name is Rey.”

“My name is Poe, and I shall do whatever work you set me with a glad heart, in recompense for such a sanctuary,” Poe replied, and so they were agreed.

So for many days Rey and Poe lived in perfect harmony, and grew to have great affection for each other, and indeed but for missing his parents and knowing that they must be mourning his death, Poe might have been happy to remain in that cottage for all his days.

Now it came to pass that the soldier who had saved Poe bethought himself that he did not wish to serve so cruel a prince as Kylo Ren, and so on a summer day, when the soldier was tasked to guard the prince’s hunting party, he contrived to fall over a certain cliff, and to conceal himself in the underbrush, so that all who watched believed him dead and his body swept away by the river. So when they had gone away, the soldier hied himself deep into the wilderness, until by great good luck he found himself at the cottage where Rey and Poe dwelt, and was there made welcome. So the three of them became great friends and more than friends, and were exceeding happy, and there was no strife between them.

They would be living there still, I am sure, but that in time there came a great misfortune, for Kylo Ren and his master Snoke went to war, and won a large part of the neighboring kingdom for their own, so that all at once the little cottage was within the borders of their kingdom. And when the war was over, Kylo Ren betook him to his magic mirror and breathed upon it, and said, “Mirror, mirror, tell me true: who more lovely do you view?”

And the mirror replied, “O prince, you are lovely and cruel and fell, but the Dameron heir is lovely as well.”

Then Kylo Ren waxed wroth out of all measure, and it would have been a great boon to the world if he had died then of spite and fury, but he did not. “How does he _live_?” he demanded of the mirror.

The mirror replied, “He fled your kingdom, warned and wise, and in a witch’s cottage lies.”

“Show him to me,” said Kylo Ren, and the mirror did. And Kylo Ren watched, waxing ever more furious, and saw the soldier whose warning had saved Poe’s life, and the witch who sheltered them, and saw, too, the love which bound them all.

“I’ll see him dead, and with his death tear out their traitor hearts,” he vowed, and then he betook himself to a secret place and for many days and nights he labored at his magery, weaving foul spells and brewing noisome potions, until at last he clothed himself in the seming of the soldier and took up and apple beautiful and treacherous, and turned his steps to the deep forest which was his rival’s sanctuary.

Kylo Ren’s magic led him at last to the stream where Poe was fishing, and Poe greeted him with glad words, though his dog cowered and whined, for Kylo Ren had not changed his scent along with his seeming. But Poe did not heed the hound, and so Kylo Ren dared to approach him, and held out the apple, saying, “I found this and thought that you must have it, for it is near as beautiful as you.”

Then Poe laughed, saying, “When did you learn to flatter like a courtier, my friend?” But he took the apple and ate of it, and as soon as he had taken a bite he fell immediately into a sleep so deep as to be death’s very brother. When it saw this, the dog leapt at Kylo Ren and bit him, tearing away part of his clothing and savaging his leg to the bone, and so Kylo Ren fled before he could make sure of Poe’s death, and when he came at last to the castle, his mirror gave him fair words, and Kylo Ren was content to know that his rival challenged him no more.

Now when evening came and Poe did not return to the cottage, Rey and the soldier, whose name was Finn, went looking for him, and found his body guarded by his faithful hound, and bore him sadly home. As they could not bear to bury their beloved and so lose sight of him forever, Rey made of crystal and precious stones a casket, and there they laid him, and for many days they mourned, while Kylo Ren gloated in his castle, for there was at last none lovelier than he in all the land.

So a year passed.

There came at last a day, a spring evening, when Rey and Finn were sitting beside the crystal casket of their beloved, telling his still form all the events of the day, and the hound lay at their feet and whined for its lost master, for this was their habit in the evenings. Then came through the trees a small group of travelers, a woman of queenly bearing and two old and weary men and one of the forest folk that some call (in grave error) sasquatch. Rey and Finn rose to greet them, and to defend the crystal casket should that be necessary.

“Tell me,” said the woman, “are we near to the country of Alderaan?” - for this was the name of the country which Kylo Ren and his master ruled.

“You are within it,” Finn replied, “though the forest stretches yet many leagues before it ends.”

“At last,” said the woman wearily, and then her eyes fell upon the crystal casket and its occupant. “But what foul magery is this?”

“We know not,” said Rey. “A year ago we found our lover thus, and though I do not think him dead, and have labored long with every spell I know or can imagine, I cannot wake him.”

“Brother,” said the queenly woman to the shorter man beside her, “can you see a way to break this curse?”

The man bowed to her, and paced around the casket solemnly, not threatening to touch it, and sighed. “So long as the malice which felled him lives, he may not,” he said sadly. “Tell me, do you know who laid so foul a curse upon him?”

“Kylo Ren,” said Rey grimly. “It can be no other.”

“Who is he, to cast such foul magics within fair Alderaan?” asked the queenly woman.

“He was the son of Good Queen Leia and her beloved consort,” Finn replied. “But now he is Snoke’s heir in cruelty and magic, and bids fair to overcome his master in time.”

At this the queenly woman turned to the tall man beside her and fell weeping into his arms, and he held her close and shed bitter tears into her hair. But at length she calmed, and turned again to face the casket, and bade her companions bring the casket and its guardians and follow her out of the forest. “For,” she said grimly, “much harm has been done, and I shall amend what of it I may.”

Rey and Finn followed her, with the casket borne between them and the faithful hound following at their heels, because there was that about her which made _not_ following her impossible; and the tall man and the forest dweller took shares in the weight of the casket as well, and the queenly woman’s brother followed them all; and so they came at last to the castle, and there found Snoke and Kylo Ren awaiting them.

Now it is true that Snoke was a powerful mage of the foulest sort, and had many cruel spells at his command, and it is true that without the warding of the queenly woman’s brother, our heroes would all have been slain of an instant, and this story become a far darker thing.

But it is also true that the queenly woman and her tall companion were distracted by the sight of Kylo Ren in his black robes, and the forest dweller was distracted by intimidating the soldiers who had come to defend their prince, and so it was Finn - soldier Finn, swift and sure as an arrow in flight - who struck the blow which dashed Snoke to the cobblestones.

And it was Rey, fierce and furious as a desert falcon, who wove the spell which struck Kylo Ren down, reeling and unconscious - for he had not bothered to fear a forest witch and her small, sheltering spells, but it is never wise to disregard those witches who dwell in the deep woods, for there are many secrets to be learned under the ancient trees. Yet they learn mercy, too, those who study from wolves and ravens, and so it was in kindness to the queenly woman’s pain that Rey’s spell left her enemy alive.

“Tell me,” said Rey to the queenly woman’s brother, “that you can lift this curse from our beloved, with Kylo Ren unconscious at your feet, or I shall slay him and his malice both, and wake our lover from his cursed sleep.”

The queenly woman’s brother bent his spells and knowledge to the task, but at last he raised his head and said, “I cannot _break_ this spell, that much is true. But I can _transfer_ it, from he who suffers it to he who cast it, and thereby wake your love.”

“Then do so speedily,” said Finn, and the queenly woman’s brother cast his spell, and from his crystal coffin Poe arose as from a long and restful sleep, and his hound gamboled at his feet in exceeding joy.

“My friends,” said Poe, and embraced his lovers, for he knew by the behavior of his hound that they were truly themselves and no enemy in a friend’s seeming; and then he looked beyond them to the queenly woman, and bowed, and cried, “My queen, you live!”

And there came a great commotion from all around them, and many who heard his words recalled the paintings they had seen of Good Queen Leia and her consort, and saw that the woman and her tall companion were as like those paintings as could be, though aged with many years of hardship, and that they wept for fallen Kylo Ren as parents would; and so there was much rejoicing among the people of that kingdom, for their queen was returned to them at last.

And in the commotion, Poe and Rey and Finn slipped away from the palace and went as swiftly as the wind to the lands which Poe’s father and mother held, and there were made welcome, for Poe had been thought lost and dead, and was returned to the bosom of his family through the love of those who had protected him, and so Rey and Finn were welcomed with open arms and open hearts.

And at last there came word from the palace, that as Kylo Ren slept in the crystal casket which had been made for Poe, and would sleep so until the curse should break, there was no heir of Leia’s blood to take the throne, and so she willed in her wisdom that those who had restored her to it should succeed her. So Rey was named Crown Princess of that land, and Finn was named Crown Prince, to rule jointly when the time should come; and Poe, who was married to both of them by that time, and they to each other, was Prince Consort in his own right, and well content.

And they all lived happily ever after

**Author's Note:**

> Come by and squee about fairy tales - or anything else - at my tumblr, imaginarygolux.tumblr.com!


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